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Full-Text Articles in Law

Indiana Jones, Contracts Originalist, W. Mark C. Weidemaier Dec 2013

Indiana Jones, Contracts Originalist, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

W. Mark C. Weidemaier

The process of drafting a contract can be routine, almost automated. Over a long enough time, lawyers may stop paying attention to contract language or even forget why it is there. The problem is acute with standard-form contracts and perhaps especially so with financial contracts such as sovereign bonds. How should courts interpret contract language when neither the parties, nor their lawyers, nor any other relevant player in the market can credibly explain what it does? This essay addresses this question in the context of one of the most contested interpretive questions in modern international finance: the meaning of the …


Public Lands And The Federal Government’S Compact-Based “Duty To Dispose”: A Case Study Of Utah’S H.B. 148 – The Transfer Of Public Lands Act, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2013

Public Lands And The Federal Government’S Compact-Based “Duty To Dispose”: A Case Study Of Utah’S H.B. 148 – The Transfer Of Public Lands Act, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Recent legislation passed in March 2012 in the State of Utah — the “Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study,” (“TPLA”) also commonly referred to as House Bill 148 (“H.B. 148”) — has demanded that the federal government, by December 31, 2014, “extinguish title” to certain public lands that the federal government currently holds (totaling an estimated more than 20 million acres). It also calls for the transfer of such acreage to the State and establishes procedures for the development of a management regime for this increased state portfolio of land holdings resulting from the transfer. The State of …